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Northern Ireland’s
power-sharing government is close to collapse again. If you don’t
really care about this, or don’t know much about it, you’re a lot
like many people in Northern Ireland.

A media desire to seem
even-handed, coupled with low levels of citizen interest and
political engagement means a lazy “they’re all as bad as each
other” anti-politics has become the tedious norm.

The collapse of the
power-sharing institutions could well catalyse a return to sustained
political violence. The return of Tory direct rule would accelerate
austerity and intensify the class war in Northern Ireland. Most
citizens would broadly accept that analysis. However, the typical
response is a sneer or a shrug.

The gist

You might have heard
something about the ‘return’ of the IRA. This is a nonsense. When
the IRA announced its cessation of armed struggled in 2005, it
instructed operatives to dump arms and embrace purely political
means. It was a matter of public record that certain structures – a
network of senior commanders and an intelligence unit – were
retained. There is probably some overlap between these structures and
the upper echelons of Sinn Fein. This is and was a modest price to
pay to ensure the republican movement entered the peace process
almost entirely intact.

Gerard Davison was killed
as a result of a personal feud. Few dispute his status as a senior
commander within this residual IRA structure. Kevin McGuigan, the man
widely accused of Davison’s murder, was killed shortly after.
McGuigan himself was once an IRA operative.

With an election looming,
the unionist parties have competed to look ‘tough’ on Sinn Fein.
They have colluded extensively with paramilitary groups on their own
side, but have tripped over each other to placate their respective
bases. The booming, quasi-fascist ‘culture’ of self-pitying
orange supremacism – stoked and given succour by mainstream
unionism – has pushed these parties further right. Residual
unionist bias within the police force has worked to strengthen
unionist parties’ talking points. The current crisis is primarily
about electoral competition within unionism – not some confected
scare about a Provo comeback.

More detail

The Stormont system was
already creaking. The DUP - who control the finance ministry and have
an effective power of veto – have been enthusiastic supporters of
Tory austerity. In this, they have been broadly supported by the
smaller UUP and Alliance parties.

The nationalist Sinn Fein
and SDLP have struggled to reconcile their rhetorical opposition to
austerity with their desire to support power-sharing. They are
routinely humiliated by unionism’s lack of interest in sharing
power in good faith. Some trade unions and some parts of civil
society have put them under intense pressure. Sinn Fein is desperate
to make an electoral breakthrough – as an anti-austerity party –
in the Republic’s upcoming elections. With hostile conservative
governments in London and Dublin, they are starved of obvious
alternative political strategies. This impasse vindicates the
dissident republicans who have never supported the peace process.

The dissidents are riddled
with police informers and command little public support, but they
appear to be growing in numbers and confidence, particularly outside
Belfast. In Belfast, a young Irish SWP councillor named Gerry Carroll
is biting at Sinn Fein’s left flank. He’s got a really good shot
at entering the Assembly when the next election is held.

Meanwhile, donations to
political parties remain secret in Northern Ireland. Allegations of
corruption have
followed the DUP for many years. A Stormont committee led by Sinn
Fein is
investigating a potentially gigantic scandal involving the DUP,
international vulture funds, the Irish Republic’s blank cheque
bailout for developers during the crash and missing offshore
millions. The current ‘crisis’ is a timely distraction. A
collapse of the Assembly would stall that investigation indefinitely.
And that would be a shame, eh?

Why you should care

Disintegrating health and
social services, shamefully high incidences of suicide and racist
attacks, routine fascist street presence and rictus-grin-faced,
gentrifying neoliberal developmentalism are all things in other
regions of the UK.

Whether you give a shit if
or when those things happen in Sheffield, Perth or Monmouthshire,
give a shit when they happen in Northern Ireland.